After about three-quarters of an hour, the carriage pulled into a building of some sort and stopped. Lincoln thought he was outside Salt Lake City; it had been quiet outside the carriage for some time, and the driver had stopped making turns to throw off pursuit or to confuse his passenger. In the latter, at least, he had succeeded; Lincoln did not know whether he was north or south or east or west of the Mormon metropolis.
"You may get out now, Mr. Lincoln," the driver said, climbing down from his own high seat. Outside, someone was closing a door. A bar thudded down.
Barn, was Lincoln 's first thought on emerging from the carriage. He revised it a moment later: no, livery stable. His nose filled with the good odors of horse and hay and leather. But for the carriage, the stable was deserted. With the door closed, it was also twilight-gloomy.
The man who had shut the door was coming toward Lincoln. Though he had expected to meet John Taylor, he needed a moment to recognize him. The fugitive Mormon president was dressed like a stablehand, in canvas trousers, collarless four-button work shirt, and straw hat. He had shaved his beard and was growing a mustache on his formerly bare upper lip.
"Thank you for agreeing to see me," he said after shaking hands. "To come with Orem here took considerable moral and physical courage."
"I will do what I can for you, Mr. Taylor," Lincoln said, "for that strikes me as a likely way to bring peace to this Territory. But I must warn you, I do not think I can do much. Bearing a grudge against me as he does, General Pope will not be inclined to act favorably upon any request I make."
"You are the former president of the United States!" Taylor exclaimed.
"I told you at our last meeting, you exaggerate the influence that gives me. I told you also, you exaggerated your ability to coerce the government of the United States into doing as you desired. Events have proved me right in the second instance. Will you not credit me for knowing whereof I speak in the first, also? In both, you would have done better to leave well enough alone."
Taylor slowly shook his head. It was not so much disagreement as disbelief. "All we wish-all we ever wished-is to live our own lives as our conscience dictates. We harm no one, and what has been our reward? Treatment that would not be meted out to redskins or Negroes. Do the people condemn the outrages we have suffered? No. They applaud, and pile on more."
"Mr. Taylor, from all I have seen in my extended stay in Salt Lake City, the only way you Mormons differ in the general run of your behavior from the mass of the American people is that you excel over them," Lincoln said. "But-"
"Of course we do," Taylor said, while the driver- Orem -nodded vigorously.
Lincoln held up a hand. "I had not finished. However fine you may be in the general run of your behavior, you have not the slightest chance, so long as you condone and practice polygamy, of ever gaining the acceptance of the vast majority of your fellow citizens."
"This is most unjust," Taylor said. "We cast no aspersions on anyone else's usages; in principle, none should be cast on ours."
Lincoln sighed. "If you wish to speak of principle, maybe you are right. Do you not see, however, that by insisting on principle in this regard, you have caused the overthrow of the principle of representative government and the principle of rule under the Constitution throughout Utah Territory? Is that what you intended when you led your people into rebellion?"
"Of course not," Taylor snapped.
"Well, then-" Lincoln spread his hands. "The simplest way for your church to make its peace with the rest of the United States would be for it to renounce the doctrines unacceptable to the nation as a whole, and to do so in all sincerity."
"That would require a divine revelation," the Mormon president replied. "None has been forthcoming, nor do I reckon one likely."
"Pity." Lincoln raised one eyebrow. "A convenient revelation now would save your people enormous heartache, enormous grief, later on."
"Revelations are not born of convenience," John Taylor said. "They spring from the will of God."
He thrust his head forward like a stubborn snapping turtle. Lincoln realized he meant what he said from the bottom of his heart. Lawyer and politician, Lincoln reckoned almost everything negotiable. When he had stood foursquare for the principle of the indissolubility of the Union, rifle musket and cannon had refuted him.
"If you will not change your views in any particular," he said, "what point to asking me to meet with you? You give me nothing to take to General Pope, even assuming the military governor were inclined to accept anything I might take him."
"We have yielded peacefully to the military power of the United States," Taylor said. "We might have done otherwise. If we continue to be oppressed, to be treated as a conquered province, we arc liable to do otherwise. We are men. We can act as men. General Pope and his Cossacks should remember as much."
"Mr. Taylor, if you value your faith, if you value the lives of your followers, I implore you, sir, do not take this course." Lincoln had never spoken more earnestly. "If you rise in arms against the United States, they will slaughter you and sow your cities with salt, as the Romans did to Carthage long ago. Do you not understand that many in the Army, many in the government, and many among the citizenry at large would be delighted to have an excuse to do exactly that?"
"We fled here to Utah to escape persecution," Taylor said. "Persecution pursued us. Should we welcome it with open arms? Should we bow to it, as the Israelites bowed to the Golden Calf?"
"You will have to judge the right for yourself, as every man must," Lincoln answered. "But I tell you that open resistance will bathe Utah in blood in a way never before seen upon this continent. We left religious war behind in Europe. We should be well advised not to let it emigrate from that place to our shores."
"What would you do, Mr. Lincoln, were your faith under attack instead of mine?" John Taylor did not try to hide his bitterness.
He framed sharp questions. He would have been dangerous in a court of law. But none of that mattered. Taylor 's failing was his inability to sec that it did not matter. Lincoln said, "I believe I should have only two choices. One would be to pay the martyr's price, the other to accommodate myself to my neighbors' usages to the degree I could do so without tearing the living heart from what I believed in."
"No accommodation we can make and still keep to our principles would satisfy our foes," Taylor said.
"That is why I hoped God in His wisdom might reveal to you a course that would let you do so," Lincoln said delicately. He remained of the opinion that John Taylor and the other leaders of the Mormon Church could produce a revelation if they put their minds to it. "The promise of peace and reconciliation might-and I can say no more than might, hardly being in the confidence of General Pope or President Blaine-might, I say, persuade the authorities to rescind the harsh sentences passed against you and your colleagues."
"If I must die on the gallows or in hunted exile, I am prepared," Taylor said.
Lincoln believed him, having seen the same implacable purpose on the faces of abolitionists and Confederate leaders alike. With another sigh, he said, "Then I fear this meeting had little point. I shall take your warning back to General Pope, but I warn you in the strongest terms not to act upon it. Do with your own life what you will, but spare your people the horrors of a war of extermination harsher than any we ever waged against the Sioux." He turned to Orem. "You may as well take me back to town. My friends will be wondering why I needed so long to buy a cake of shaving soap."